1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic accompaniment apparatus and a method of controlling the same that connect an external electronic musical instrument to the apparatus and generate accompaniments via the external electronic musical instrument, as well as a program for implementing the method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there has been known an automatic accompaniment apparatus that connects an external electronic musical instrument thereto and generates accompaniments via the external electronic musical instrument.
As an example of such an automatic accompaniment apparatus, there has been proposed an automatic accompaniment apparatus that connects thereto a musical tone generating apparatus (electronic musical instrument), which does not have an automatic accompaniment function, and generates an accompaniment via the musical tone generating apparatus by transmitting accompaniment information generated by the automatic accompaniment apparatus to the musical tone generating apparatus (see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. S61-292691, for example).
In the above conventional automatic accompaniment apparatus, however, accompaniment information is generated by the automatic accompaniment apparatus whereas accompaniment tones are sounded by the external electronic musical instrument. Thus, not accompaniment data stored in the external electronic musical instrument but accompaniment data stored in the automatic accompaniment apparatus is used as accompaniment data (for example, accompaniment style data) in generating accompaniment information. Therefore, even if accompaniment data stored in the external electronic musical instrument is musically richer than accompaniment data stored in the automatic accompaniment apparatus, accompaniment information is generated using the accompaniment data stored in the automatic accompaniment apparatus, and hence the generated accompaniment information thus generated does not enable the external electronic musical instrument to exhibit its accompaniment information generating capability to the maximum.
Also, in the above conventional automatic accompaniment apparatus, even if an external electronic musical instrument connected thereto is capable of generating accompaniment information, what kind of tone color data and accompaniment data are stored in advance in the external electronic musical instrument cannot be known through the automatic accompaniment apparatus, and hence tone color data and accompaniment data adapted to the external electronic musical instrument cannot be set through the automatic accompaniment apparatus.